Goodreads Authors/Readers discussion

Hello everyone, desperately looking for advice here, please!

I recently hired someone on Fiverr to do a little Netgalley promotional work for a book, all above board.
She performed a shoddy job, so my review reflected this: 2.7 out of 5. Fair, I thought.
She retaliated by attacking EVERY ONE of my six books on Goodreads, using five separate accounts to slap me with a single star each.
I have reported this injustice to Goodreads, and they are investigating, but it's a lengthy process.
As you can imagine, my modest averages have suffered immensely.

In the meantime, I look like a terrible author.
This misfortune is especially damaging regarding a book I published only last week, which currently sits on 1.67 stars.
As this is the first week of publication, it is vital to smash my promotion hard, but now I am too embarrassed.

As a struggling self-published author, this is extremely devastating to me and damages my career. Does anyone have any ideas on how I can rectify this situation?

Be patient. Once Goodreads staff have investigated and verified that the ratings are bogus, they will be deleted.

For whatever reason, the vast majority of avid readers choose to never post a rating or review. Those that do are merely expressing their personal, and therefore subjective, opinion. One reader's Best book ever! may very well be another reader's Worst book ever! which is why most savvy readers do not allow a rating or review to influence their purchasing choice one way or the other.

Contrary to what many novice authors believe, sales drive ratings and reviews, not the other way around. Focus more upon striving to continuously improve upon basic writing, promotional, and marketing skills rather than obsessing over ratings/reviews and the sales will improve.

Very few unknown authors ever achieve significant commercial success or even notoriety within this extremely competitive field. That said; some have. There is no reason why you might not eventually become one of them. I wish you success!

Jared wrote: "Hello everyone, desperately looking for advice here, please!

I recently hired someone on Fiverr to do a little Netgalley promotional work for a book, all above board.
She performed a shoddy job, s..."

Contact Fiverr administration with a report of the promoters actions. They take a dim view of someone who retaliates in this manner.

I have always found fiverr very supportive

Ok cool, I'll try get hold of Fiverr's support. Thanks, everyone!

I had someone drop a 1-star review on a book I wrote, just out of the blue. I mean, I'm no Robert Louis Stevenson or Fyodor Dostoyevsky, but I don't write 1 star books. There's not much you can do about malicious idiots, but Jim is right, bad reviews aren't as bad as you might think. People who care about reviews also read them, and lame reviews or just low star count reviews are pretty well ignored.

Christopher wrote: "I had someone drop a 1-star review on a book I wrote, just out of the blue. I mean, I'm no Robert Louis Stevenson or Fyodor Dostoyevsky, but I don't write 1 star b..."

The problem is that it's five different accounts made by one person attacking all of my six books on the same day. It's not just a one-star rating, I am fine with that. This is an act of aggression.

That is really sad to hear. I always believed that the writing community was supportive.

The good news about the same day drop of reviews is that it won’t be hard to connect the dots and have the bogus reviews removed. But definitely report this to Fiverr as they don’t tolerate this kind of behavior and will take quick action to remove this seller.

Not another one. So sorry to hear this is going on.